Spent late yesterday afternoon in Marston Thrift after being lured there by a brief burst of sun. By the time I got there, cloudy conditions hasd resumed and there were no Black Hairstreaks or White Admirals to be seen. One probable Hairstreak flying up into an Oak from a small clearing along the main ride was almost certainly a Purple, though I didn't get bins on it.
A couple of Azure Damselflies provided food for thought. One showed broken antehumeral stripes suggesting Variable; probably the same individual was seen twice, lost the first time as it flew with several other blue damsels, but then photographed about 30 minutes later:
The antehumerals are right for Variable, but the black U mark at the base of the abdomen and cup mark at the tip clearly make it an Azure...... but the cup mark can sometimes be severely reduced on Azure, as this individual shows:
Also got a nice Large Skipper:
... which turned out to be almost a mirror image of my previous best Large Skip shot, in an identical pose on the same leaf (Bramble?) but facing left.
...and a female Meadow Brown. These always seem to look out-of-focus - I think they just have a blurry wing pattern.
The previous weekend I spent a Sunday of reasonable weather checking Wilstead Wood for (non-present and probably long locally extinct) Wood White, and Tiddenfoot for (again absent) Downy Emerald, but got a pair of Common Blue Damsels in cop:
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